“(Christians) would have to sing better songs for me to believe in their Savior: his disciples would have to look more redeemed.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“Touché! Point well taken.” ~ Dan Miller

Ever since a few women friends of Jesus went to the tomb where he was buried and found it empty people have been raising questions about the raising of Jesus. Ever since those women raced home breathless and afraid, yet giddy with joy to tell the others the source of their panting fear and excitement, ever since the unconvinced apostles and doubting Thomas were confronted with what the women stammered to say, people have believed and doubted, doubted and believed the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Since the beginning, questions and opinions have persisted as to exactly what happened at the tomb, what the disciples experienced after Jesus’ death. If Jesus did appear to the disciples after his death, as it is reported in the gospels, exactly how, in what form, did he appear to them who saw but often did not immediately recognize him? Anyone who can google “Gospel parallels” can see the discrepancies and unique accounts of what happened after Jesus’ death as portrayed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Ask a dozen randomly selected, self-identified Christians “Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus?” “Do you believe Jesus was raised from the dead?” “Do you believe Jesus arose in bodily form?” and you will get a gamut of responses.

Some will say, matter of factly, others with devout assertion, “Yes, I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.” Some will say sheepishly, others unapologetically, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Still others will reply, ”I believe in the resurrection, but not the bodily resurrection.” And non-believers will add responses as varied as a deferential “with all due respect, no” or a disinterested shrug as if to say “It’s not my thing,” or a mocking “I believe in the bodily resurrection as much as I believe in God: not at all.” The disagreement among Christians is usually accompanied, on the one hand, by the blushing that comes from judgment and condemnation – “How can you believe in resurrection as an ‘idea,’ apart from Christ’s body?” and, on the other hand, by the blushing that comes from arrogance and looks of mock presumption, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re literalizing what was people’s attempt to put into words a real though inexplicable life-altering experience.”

Too often these debates tend to occur in white ivory tower settings, where very little is actually at stake other than maybe a presenter’s ego or public intellectual prowess or future fame for “burying” (pardon the pun) their opponent in an argument later posted (these days always posted). These debates rarely are heard at the dinner tables of the poor or needy. I doubt you will hear “Do you think the resurrection of Jesus was historical or meta-historical?” at the groaning boards of the vulnerable, the least of these who also are intelligent and often people of faith and whose resurrection is bread or a better pair of shoes or enough money to get their impounded dog out of the public dog house or safety from a violent spouse or a warm bed or a job or knowing the whereabouts of their six-year old after the bombs visited.

I confess, despite my theological education, I never have had a surplus of energy for these kinds of theological sparring bouts. In contrast to the weight given them by so many of the eager debaters, I don’t experience them as particularly constructive or edifying. I’m weary of the omniscient dogmatism, self-certainty, and condemnation from the one side — “It’s in our creed, you know. If you don’t believe it, you don’t have the right to call yourself a Christian,” and tired of the sophisticated pompousness, intolerance, and condescension from the other side — “You’re just plain ignorant and naïve to believe such nonsense, to take the bible literally. You reflect badly on the rest of us who call ourselves Christians.”

The older I get (I wish I could say wiser), the more impatient I am with these verbal contests. I tend to stand with Chief Bromden and call it a day. In the last line of the opening chapter in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a first-hand account of a modern Christ-story, Chief Bromden, the narrator, speaks a simple but poignant sentence that serves as a threshold the reader steps over from the preface to the wild ride of the story itself which moves from human ignominy and systemic injustice to the power of friendship and the cost of love to death and liberation: “But it’s the truth,” says the Chief, “even if it didn’t happen.” Which is also a backhanded way of saying “and it’s true if it did.” I don’t think applying the Chief’s words to the question of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead is nonchalant. Quite the contrary. I believe it emphasizes the seriousness of the matter by suggesting that the truth of something is not reducible to or bound by historical facticity any more than Jesus was bound by the grave.

Of course, an answer to the question “Was Jesus raised from the dead?” is not immediately verifiable one way or the other. When answered in the negative, it is a position deduced from the unprecedented nature of the claim and its failure to pass the test of empirical verification. In the affirmative, it is a proclamation of faith, in fact, the central proclamation of Christian faith. For me, whether it happened exactly as one of the evangelists sets it down is irrelevant. Whether it happened that way or not, it’s true. Resurrection is true. That’s a faith claim and a faith calling.

When all is said and done, I suspect we are spending too much time asking the question: “Do you believe . . .?” instead of explaining the integral relationship between belief, faith, and action. We have lost sight of the fact that apart from faith, belief is no more than giving intellectual assent to something. But within the realm of the household of faith– what St. Paul calls the body of Christ, whether for the about-to-be-baptized or the elderly Christian, within Christian spirituality as our enacted response to the dying and rising of Jesus– to say “I believe” means I will give my life to, I will align my life with, I will incarnate, I will make real and present in my life and in the world. For faith is deeper, wider, and taller than mere belief. There are many who say “I believe in the resurrection,” many who give intellectual assent to the statement “Jesus was raised from the dead,” but who fail to give any significant portion of their life to participating in resurrection which is just as imperative, just as constitutive a dimension of the Christ-life here on earth as is dying.

Perhaps the farmer-poet from Kentucky who knows the truth of the land as well as the truth of a line, who knows a thing or two about death and rebirth, can point us in the right direction, can narrow the imagined gap between belief and faith and between faith and works. Famously now among the lovers of words and two inches of humus and sequoias and neighbors and God, Wendell Berry ends his poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” with the succinct two-word imperative that is the marching order of all who dare to follow Christ or be the partner of life: “Practice Resurrection.” Herein, lies the real Easter question for us: “Will you practice resurrection? Will I?”

Lest we think we can avoid our own Good Fridays by moving out of line and crossing over to the long line marked Resurrection (“geez, aren’t there any more check out clerks?”), we must realize that only those who are personally familiar with dying can practice resurrection. It’s a two-for-one mystery and a two-for-one gift. It’s not about checking out, it’s about diving in. It’s only when we have been touched, moved, upended, or devastated by the nemeses of life that we will begin to care enough to participate in the pathos of God and the suffering of others by being the bearers of love and the carriers of life. Practicing resurrection involves being courageous and compassionate enough to be on the lookout for any accomplice of death, to notice where and when Christ is being crucified today in “a Golgotha near you.” This is what we’ve dared to allow ourselves to be signed on for – to search and find the hidden, abandoned, neglected, lonely, hurting, exploited, and broken versions of the crucified Christ in our midst and to take them down from the cross, as Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino puts it, and to be with and for them the real presence of life.

Being the presence of resurrection, the presence of life in the face of death means embodying love in the midst of indifference, incarnating Divine concern in the face of human callousness or cruelty, embodying Divine sympathy in the presence of another’s suffering, caring for the earth as it groans in travail, resisting the vogue of violence by making peace, fleshing out companionship with someone who is lonely, being kind in the midst of another’s self-condemnation or fear, being a hopeful presence in the midst of despair, embodying trust in the midst of evidence to the contrary, incarnating compassion and mercy in the midst of anguish, offering a listening heart when someone needs to be heard.

For practitioners, resurrection is always an embodied truth — in little gestures, in acts more than words, in words when spoken tenderly or when confirming or calling forth that which is deepest in the other, in deeds common and uncommon, premeditated and spontaneous, simple or courageous.

When we practice the presence of God, the works of mercy, the works of justice, the works of peace, we practice resurrection and radiate the look of love. I have never met anyone on whom resurrection didn’t look good.